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NDP, Liberals vague on fixing frayed social safety net: Walkom

We know that Stephen Harper is cutting back social programs. We don't know what Justin Trudeau or Tom Mulcair would do instead.

Both Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, above, and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair say they will jettison Stephen Harper’s plan to raise the age of eligibility for Old Age Security to 67 from 65, writes Thomas Walkom (Sean Kilpatrick / THE CANADIAN PRESS file photo)

“We have never said that,” he told the Commons. “We are looking at a range of plans.”

The idea of doubling CPP payouts, said NDP finance critic Peggy Nash later in the debate, is just one of several options her party is considering.

The Liberals, too, are in flux. Markham—Unionville MP John McCallum told the Commons that the Liberal stance “as of today” is to support an unspecified rise in CPP benefits.

But he warned that his party has not nailed down its policies yet and said this position could change before the next election.

There are some things we do know about the opposition’s approach to the social safety net.

Both Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair say they will jettison Harper’s plan to raise the age of eligibility for Old Age Security to 67 from 65.

Mulcair has also criticized the latest Conservative plans to tighten up Employment Insurance, while Trudeau has said he’d scrap them and start all over again.

These days, Harper is demonized for axing social programs. But it was a Liberal government under Jean Chrétien that caused most damage to Canada’s safety net.

In 1995, Chrétien and his then finance minister Paul Martin gutted what was then called unemployment insurance to pay down the federal deficit.

The Martin-Chrétien team also demolished the Canada Assistance Plan, which originally had committed Ottawa to paying half the costs of welfare.

New Democrats still tweak the Liberals for that. But neither opposition party talks of resurrecting shared-cost welfare programs.

Nor is there any talk of returning employment insurance to pre-1995 levels (although in the 2011 election campaign, the NDP did promise to enrich the program “as finances permit.”)

More to the point, neither has yet come to grips with the fact that, in an era of multiple jobs, part-time work and self-employment, an EI program designed largely for factory workers is increasingly irrelevant.

In their pitch to what they call the middle class, both Trudeau and Mulcair have promised not to raise the GST or boost taxes on the rich.

Mulcair has said he will hike corporate taxes and introduce a cap-and-trade system to control carbon emissions that could provide the federal treasury with billions in extra revenue.

But he hasn’t yet said what an NDP government would do with any extra money.

In 2011, the NDP promised to direct $20 billion over four years from such extra revenues to so-called green initiatives. It also promised $7 billion in tax cuts for business and $12 billion to bolster services for families and older people.

The Liberals? Trudeau has said that he won’t raise even corporate taxes. So it’s not clear how his party would mend the social safety net it accuses Harper of destroying — if, indeed, that is what it intends to do.

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